My grand-daughter Trixie has written of her "sleep compiler", an advanced electronic bio-feedback device that allows you to get by on just two or three hours of sleep a night. (It also lets you subscribe to the cable-dream network, but that's a post for another day.)

We seem to be catching up fast on Trixie's 22nd century world, unless it turns out that modafinil (pronounced like mow-daffodil) has some nasty side effects. Nastier than rashes and upset tummies anyway.

Modafinil (marketed as Provigil) has the curious effect of suppressing your urge to sleep. You still get tired - just not sleepy. And you still can sleep; it doesn't cause insomnia. It's just that you can remain awake and alert for extended periods without the need for sleep, and without the familiar side-effects of caffeine and amphetamines.*

It's not a stimulant; there's no high with modafinil. You wake up feeling rested, you find it easy to concentrate, you feel like doing work. You may also find yourself grinning like a feral chipmunk, so if this is not normal for you, you might find it best to keep your office door closed.

This site has first hand reports from people who have tried modifinil. It's interesting stuff, if subjective and occasionally unsettling:

I would warn that there might be a contraindication for high doses of Wellbutrin plus Provigil. I should mention I had some meth-amphetamine metabolites running around in my system from the previous night's partying (2 healthy sized tokes).

Is modafinil the magic, um, sleep thingy? No-one's ready to come out and say so just yet. As a sufferer of the dread 28-hour sleep cycle† I'm more than a little interested; as a cowardly chicken who ain't gonna take no nasty pills‡ I'm inclined to wait and see.

Now I'm just waiting for the modafinil spam to arrive.

* Well, I'm not personally familiar with the side-effects of amphetamines, but they have been studied extensively.

† Left to my own devices, I sleep ten hours out of twenty-eight, rather than eight out of twenty-four. I'm never ready to go to bed in time to get enough sleep so that I'll be ready to get up in the morning, if you follow me. If I go to bed at 11 pm, say, I don't want to get up until 9, and even if I crawl out of bed at 7 I'm not ready to sleep again until 1 am. I've been this way since my teens, so I've learned to live with it.

One thing that helps is that there are exactly six 28-hour days in a normal muggle week. So if I take a week off and let my sleep pattern take its natural course, it's back in sync at the end... Or actually, eight hours out, which is what happens every weekend, which I counter with a nap on Sunday afternoon, except then I don't get to sleep until late and...

It's after midnight, and I'm fully alert, and I have to go to bed now or I won't get up in the morning. Bah.

‡ Except my anti-sneeze tablets, because without those, life ain't worth living.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 10:30 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Le vote français plonge l'Union européenne
dans une période d'incertitudes

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 09:51 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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It is always a temptation to an armed and agile nation,
To call upon a neighbour and to say:
"We invaded you last night - we are quite prepared to fight,
Unless you pay us cash to go away."

And that is called asking for Dane-geld,
And the people who ask it explain
That you’ve only to pay ’em the Dane-geld
And then you’ll get rid of the Dane!

It is always a temptation to a rich and lazy nation,
To puff and look important and to say:
"Though we know we should defeat you, we have not the time to meet you.
We will therefore pay you cash to go away."

And that is called paying the Dane-geld;
But we’ve proved it again and again,
That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld
You never get rid of the Dane.

It is wrong to put temptation in the path of any nation,
For fear they should succumb and go astray,
So when you are requested to pay up or be molested,
You will find it better policy to say:

"We never pay any one Dane-geld,
No matter how trifling the cost,
For the end of that game is oppression and shame,
And the nation that plays it is lost!"

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 08:08 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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As older societies, we tend to think of ourselves as more experienced in the way societies evolve, and we tend to be skeptical of Americans who seem to think that if you believe hard enough, and you muster enough resources, you can change the world.

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He is blatantly a puppet for corporate interests, who care only about their own greed and have no sense of civic responsibility or community service. He lies, constantly and often, seemingly without control, and he lied about his invasion into a sovereign country, again for corporate interests; many people have died and been maimed, and that has been lied about too. He grandstands and mugs in a shameful manner, befitting a snake oil salesman, not a statesman. He does not think, process, or speak well, and is emotionally immature due to, among other things, his lack of recovery from substance abuse. The term is "dry drunk". He is an abject embarrassment/pariah overseas; the rest of the world hates him . . . . . He is, by far, the most irresponsible, unethical, inexcusable occupant of our formerly highest office in the land that there has ever been.

The thing is, after spending several paragraphs showing us just how sadly deranged his colleagues are and thereby earning our respect, McElvaine suddenly veers leftward into the swamp with his own assessment of the Bush Administration. He suggests that Bush:

Presided over the loss of approximately three million American jobs in his first two-and-a-half years in office, the worst record since Herbert Hoover.

Overseen an economy in which the stock market suffered its worst decline in the first two years of any administration since Hoover’s.

Taken, in the wake of the terrorist attacks two years ago, the greatest worldwide outpouring of goodwill the United States has enjoyed at least since World War II

and squandered it by insisting on pursuing a foolish go-it-almost-alone invasion of Iraq

thereby transforming almost universal support for the United States into worldwide condemnation.

Misled (to use the most charitable word and interpretation)

the American public about weapons of mass destruction and supposed ties to Al Qaeda in Iraq

and so into a war that has plainly (and entirely predictably) made us less secure

I'm waiting.

caused a boom in the recruitment of terrorists

is killing American military personnel needlessly

and is threatening to suck up all our available military forces and be a bottomless pit for the money of American taxpayers for years to come.

And you know, Iraq might not be sucking up all available military forces if President Clinton hadn't gutted them in the first place. This thought occured to me, but then I'm not a Historian.

Failed to follow through in Afghanistan, where the Taliban and Al Qaeda are regrouping, once more increasing the threat to our people.

Insulted and ridiculed other nations and international organizations and now has to go, hat in hand, to those nations and organizations begging for their assistance.

You wouldn't care to produce an example of this, by any chance? I like to see specifics rather than sweeping claims, but then, I'm not a Historian.

Completely miscalculated or failed to plan for the personnel and monetary needs in Iraq after the war

so that he sought and obtained an $87 billion appropriation for Iraq, a sizable chunk of which is going, without competitive bidding to Haliburton, the company formerly headed by his vice president.

Now, I know the reasons and origins of the Halliburton contract - which dates to the Clinton administration - and would never resort to misleading my audience that way. But then, I'm not a Historian.

Inherited an annual federal budget surplus of $230 billion and transformed it into a $500+ billion deficit in less than three years. This negative turnaround of three-quarters of a trillion dollars is totally without precedent in our history. The ballooning deficit for fiscal 2004 is rapidly approaching twice the dollar size of the previous record deficit, $290 billion, set in 1992, the last year of the administration of President Bush’s father and, at almost 5 percent of GDP, is closing in on the percentage record set by Ronald Reagan in 1986.

Cut taxes three times, sharply reducing the burden on the rich

reclassified money obtained through stock ownership as more deserving than money earned through work.

Severely curtailed the very American freedoms that our military people are supposed to be fighting to defend.

Called upon American armed service people, including Reserve forces, to sacrifice for ever-lengthening tours of duty in a hostile and dangerous environment while he rewards the rich at home with lower taxes and legislative giveaways and gives lucrative no-bid contracts to American corporations linked with the administration.

Second, we freed fifty million people from tyranny. When did that last happen without sacrifice, Mr Historian?

Third, your points on taxes and Halliburton have already been made and refuted. You don't get to run them up the field again.

Given an opportunity to begin to change the consumption-oriented values of the nation after September 11, 2001, when people were prepared to make a sacrifice for the common good, called instead of Americans to ‘sacrifice’ by going out and buying things.

Proclaimed himself to be a conservative while maintaining that big government should be able to run roughshod over the Bill of Rights

and that the government must have all sorts of secrets from the people

but the people can be allowed no privacy from the government.

And here's McElvaine's parting gift:

Some voters may judge such assessments to be wrong, but they are assessments informed by historical knowledge and the electorate ought to have them available to take into consideration during this election year.

But they are most certainly untroubled by any knowledge of economics or the conduct of war, by any care for human rights, or any concern for hewing to the truth.

An F for you, Mr McElvaine. A B+ for President Bush.

(Via Instapundit)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 10:30 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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As in most previous surveys of journalists, a high number called themselves politically "moderate" (49%), with 31% describing themselves as "liberal" and just 9% as "conservative."

Forty-eight percent of the public but only 11% of journalists said news organizations were "often inaccurate." When serious mistakes are made, 74% of the journalists said news organizations quickly report the error, but only 30% of the public said they do. In the public, 24% said news organizations try to ignore errors and 41% said they try to cover them up.

"That was the most surprising thing, the public perception that journalists don't correct errors," Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Center, told E&P. "We focused on the serious errors and you have journalists believing they correct them. You'd like to know what the truth is."

That's not a gap, that's a chasm. A yawning gulf:

"This study reveals a worrisome divide between the public's view of journalism and journalists' own views of their work," Geneva Overholser, a former Washington Post ombudsman and the author of a new book on the press, said in a statement. "If journalists do indeed believe that what they do is valuable, fair, and ethically sound, it's past time they began to put that case more effectively to the public."

(Via Roger L. Simon)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 10:02 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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The truth is that Americans are living in a dream world. Not only do others not share America's self-regard, they no longer aspire to emulate the country's social and economic achievements.

The loss of faith in the American Dream goes beyond this swaggering administration and its war in Iraq.

A President Kerry would have had to confront a similar disaffection, for it grows from the success of something America holds dear: the spread of democracy, free markets and international institutions—globalization, in a word.

Democracy - bad! Free markets - bad! International institutions - well, if you're talking about QUANGOs - the U.N., the World Bank, IMF and suchlike, I'm inclined to grant you that one.

But there's a certain irony when Newsweek is saying they hate us because of our freedom. About 8.5 on the Irony Richter Scale, I'd say.

Countries today have dozens of political, economic and social models to choose from.

Anti-Americanism is especially virulent in Europe and Latin America, where countries have established their own distinctive ways—none made in America.

America didn't invent democracy or free markets, though it did give them some unprecedented guarantees in its Constitution. Since the year that document was signed, France has changed its form of government - not just the ruler or leader, but the very nature of the government itself - twelve times.

The made-in-America product seems to be somewhat more reliable than what many European countries have managed, with the exception perhaps of Britain. I won't even mention Latin America.

Futurologist Jeremy Rifkin, in his recent book "The European Dream," hails an emerging European Union based on generous social welfare, cultural diversity and respect for international law—a model that's caught on quickly across the former nations of Eastern Europe and the Baltics.

In Asia, the rise of autocratic capitalism in China or Singapore is as much a "model" for development as America's scandal-ridden corporate culture.

Much in American law and society troubles the world these days. Nearly all countries reject the United States' right to bear arms as a quirky and dangerous anachronism.

They abhor the death penalty and demand broader privacy protections.

Above all, once most foreign systems reach a reasonable level of affluence, they follow the Europeans in treating the provision of adequate social welfare is a basic right.

Adequate social welfare is not a basic right. This is where the UN Declaration on Human Rights also goes off the rails. You guarantee adequate social welfare by taking money from someone and giving it to someone else. That's not a right, that's redistribution.

A right is something that someone has unless you forcibly take it away. Freedom of speech. Freedom of assembly. Freedom of religion. The right to own property. The right to bear arms. You can't give any of those to someone, because you're born with them.

Welfare payments aren't something that every human is born with; they aren't in any way a right. That doesn't mean they're wrong, or a bad idea, though poorly planned they can (and do) lead to economic disaster. They can be analysed as an investment, as insurance, as a maintenance cost, but they are not a right.

All this, says Bruce Ackerman at Yale University Law School, contributes to the growing sense that American law, once the world standard, has become "provincial."

The United States' refusal to apply the Geneva Conventions to certain terrorist suspects

to ratify global human-rights treaties such as the innocuous Convention on the Rights of the Child

Right, as I thought. Article 17, state interference in the media. Article 26, conflation of human rights and socialism. Article 27, ditto. Article 28, more of the same. Article 29, wank. Articles 43-45, interfering busybodies. Not bad compared to the Declaration on Human Rights, but ample reason not to ratify - unless you don't intend to uphold the Convention in the first place.

or to endorse the International Criminal Court

(coupled with the abuses at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo)

only reinforces the conviction that America's Constitution and legal system are out of step with the rest of the world.

The American Dream has always been chiefly economic—a dynamic ideal of free enterprise, free markets and individual opportunity based on merit and mobility.

Certainly the U.S. economy has been extraordinarily productive.

Yes, American per capita income remains among the world's highest.

Yet these days there's as much economic dynamism in the newly industrializing economies of Asia, Latin America and even eastern Europe.

First, it's a lot easier to double per-capita GDP from $1000 to $2000 than from $40,000 to $80,000.

Second, guess where a lot of the money for that economic growth is coming from? Guess who's buying all those cheap goodies from Chinese factories?

All are growing faster than the United States. At current trends, the Chinese economy will be bigger than America's by 2040.

Whether those trends will continue is not so much the question.

You are assuming that since China's economy (for example) grew by 9.1% in 2004, that it will sustain that growth rate for another 35 years. Well that's one hell of an assumption.

Better to ask whether the American way is so superior that everyone else should imitate it. And the answer to that, increasingly, is no.

Much has made, for instance, of the differences between the dynamic American model and the purportedly sluggish and overregulated "European model."

Ongoing efforts at European labor-market reform and fiscal cuts are ridiculed.

Why can't these countries be more like Britain, businessmen ask, without the high tax burden, state regulation and restrictions on management that plague Continental economies? Sooner or later, the [conventional wisdom] goes, Europeans will adopt the American model—or perish.

Yet this is a myth.

For much of the postwar period Europe and Japan enjoyed higher growth rates than America.

Airbus recently overtook Boeing in sales of commercial aircraft, and the EU recently surpassed America as China's top trading partner.

This year's ranking of the world's most competitive economies by the World Economic Forum awarded five of the top 10 slots—including No. 1 Finland—to northern European social democracies.

Lorenzo Codogno, co-head of European economics at the Bank of America, believes the British, like Europeans elsewhere, "will try their own way to achieve a proper balance."

Certainly they would never put up with the lack of social protections afforded in the American system.

Europeans are aware that their systems provide better primary education, more job security and a more generous social net.

They are willing to pay higher taxes and submit to regulation in order to bolster their quality of life.

Productivity throughout Europe, measured in per-capita GDP, is significantly lower than in America and growing more slowly. That means that no matter how you redistribute the pie, no matter where you decide is the proper balance, there's less pie to hand around.

Americans work far longer hours than Europeans do, for instance.

But they are not necessarily more productive

—nor happier

buried as they are in household debt

without the time (or money)

available to Europeans for vacation

and international travel.

George Monbiot, a British public intellectual, speaks for many when he says, "The American model has become an American nightmare rather than an American dream."

Just look at booming bri-tain.

Instead of cutting social welfare, Tony Blair's Labour government has expanded it. According to London's Centre for Policy Studies, public spending in Britain represented 43 percent of GDP in 2003, a figure closer to the Eurozone average than to the American share of 35 percent. It's still on the rise—some 10 percent annually over the past three years

—at the same time that social welfare is being reformed to deliver services more efficiently.

Because taking people's pie away and shuffling it about doesn't create any more pie.

America is about making pie.

Europe is about cutting the pie into ever-finer slices, and deciding who gets what based on an increasingly arbitrary set of rules.

The inspiration, says Giddens, comes not from America, but from social-democratic Sweden, where universal child care, education and health care have been proved to increase social mobility, opportunity and, ultimately, economic productivity.

In the United States, inequality once seemed tolerable because America was the land of equal opportunity. But this is no longer so. Two decades ago, a U.S. CEO earned 39 times the average worker; today he pulls in 1,000 times as much.

Since then, the rich have been getting richer, and the poor have been getting... richer too. The rich have been getting richer faster than the poor have, but I'm not at all convinced that that is a problem.

Cross-national studies show that America has recently become a relatively difficult country for poorer people to get ahead. Monbiot summarizes the scientific data: "In Sweden, you are three times more likely to rise out of the economic class into which you were born than you are in the U.S."

First, poverty in the U.S. is something that most countries in the world even today would not recognise as anything of the sort.

Second, Sweden has economic classes? Isn't that illegal or something.

Third, no-one ever said it should be easy to "rise out of the economic class into which you were born". It's a bit of a mouthful, anyway. What's immportant is that everyone has the opportunity, that there are no artificial barriers put in the way.

I can't take any more of this. It just goes on and on in the same noxious, factually-challenged way.

You want to know why people don't like America? I suggest that Newsweek has something to do with it.

Oh, one last quote. Unfortunately, the only appropriate response to this bit is strange choking noises:

When the soviets withdrew from Central Europe, U.S. constitutional experts rushed in. They got a polite hearing, and were sent home. Jiri Pehe, adviser to former president Vaclav Havel, recalls the Czechs' firm decision to adopt a European-style parliamentary system with strict limits on campaigning. "For Europeans, money talks too much in American democracy. It's very prone to certain kinds of corruption, or at least influence from powerful lobbies," he says. "Europeans would not want to follow that route."

(Via The Anchoress)

Update: Tuning Spork takes up the sledgehammer and gives Newsweek a few more whacks. One point he raises is interesting; he says

The truth is that Americans are living in a dream world.

It's called "the future", thank you.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 03:12 AM | Comments (27) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Whereas believers of all cults, including the Lucasic faiths of Jedi and Sith, should be treated with respect and dignity;

Whereas the word Jedi comes from the Gungan root word meaning “toast” and “marmalade”;

Whereas there is an estimated $20 billion in revenue in Star Wars, from a wide variety of ethnic backgrounds, forming an integral part of the economic fabric of America;

Whereas Episode IV is the holy film for Jedi who recite passages from it in prayer and learn valuable lessons about peace, humanity and the repair and maintenance of vaporators;

Whereas it should never be official policy of the United States Government to disparage Episode IV, or any film or character in any way, shape, or form, except for Jar-Jar Binks who is fair game;

Whereas mistreatment of moviegoers and disrespect toward the holy film of any cult is unacceptable and against civilized humanity;

Whereas the infringement of an individual’s right to freedom of viewing violates the Constitution and laws of the United States: Now, therefore, be it

1 Resolved, That the House of Blog –

(1) condemns bigotry, acts of violence, and intolerance against any cult, including our friends, neighbors, and citizens of the Jedi faith;

(2) declares that the civil rights and civil liberties of all individuals, including those of the Jedi faith, should be protected;

(3) recognizes that Episode IV, the holy film of the Jedi, as any other holy film of any cult, should be treated with dignity and respect;

(4) calls upon local, State, and Federal authorities to work to prevent bias-motivated crimes and acts against all individuals, including those of the Jedi faith; and

(5) recognizes that Han shot first.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 12:30 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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None of them seem to have read Bill Whittle's recent piece, Sanctuary, or even Part I of this series.

Here's the problem in a nutshell.

Us, the good guys, the people who actually live in reality:

We freed the people of Afghanistan and Iraq from tyranny and gave them self-determination.

There were no WMDs!

We did free fifty million people from two of the vilest regimes in the world. Fact. Irrefutable. Were the Taliban and the Ba'athists vile oppressors? Yes. Are they now gone? Yes.

Done. We (the sane ones) are provably correct in our assertion.

Now, as to the moonbats: They say there were no WMDs. This appears to be correct. Of course, due to U.N. obstructionism, Saddam Hussein had months to move any WMDs he may have had, to Syria or elsewhere. But we don't know if that happened, all we know is that we haven't found any WMDs.

But this is not to the point. We are still correct, we have still accomplished a great good, a highly admirable deed.

Underlying the moonbat claim are two other assumptions, one false, the other insane.

First, that we invaded Iraq only because of WMDs. This is simply false. Read any of the speeches made in the days leading up to the war, and you will find that this is only one of the reasons.

Second, that false intent inevitably poisons any good outcome. This belief is insane, because it prevents you from dealing with the world as it really is.

Fifty million people are free. Fact. Even if President Bush had invaded Iraq to steal their sandworms and make himself the immortal God Emperor of America, it wouldn't change the fact that fifty million people are now free.

Furthermore, claims of intent are basically unfalsifiable. You can claim that the President really did invade Iraq for that reason, and everything he has said, and everything that has been done, is just a coverup for his real intentions. In other words, statements attributing intent to other people are only valid insofar as they match their words and actions, because words and actions are what take place in the real world.

So claims that the military never intended to properly investigate Abu Ghraib or Bagram fall flat in the face of the fact that the military did properly investigate Abu Ghraib and Bagram. Statements that aspects of the investigations were unsatisfactory, for reasons of procedure or outcome, those can be assessed and addressed in terms of fact and logic and may well prove to be substantive.

Unfortunately, that sort of statement is largely avoided by the left. Which is no surprise, because being a leftist in the first place requires a strong aversion to reality. They are not interested in talking about what is said and what is done, only about underlying meanings and intent - statements that cannot be contradicted.

If they were interested in outcomes, in actions, in the real world, they wouldn't be leftists. Maybe it was different in 1917, but there's no excuse today.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 10:24 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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This forum, this beautiful wellspring that is Webdiary which speaks so uniquely the voice of our small corner of humanity, is daily bubbling over with gut-given substance from each of those inner depths we plumb when we are moved by the fundamental need of having asked of ourselves why. So many wonderful voices, speaking, in essence, as one! Speaking in response to that singular question.

Don't we share this need wonderfully!

These people aren't just stupid, they're actually ill. It's some sort of mental imbalance, possibly treatable, possibly not. But let's face it, the folk of Web Diary are hopelessly inane, and belong in an inane asylum.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 12:03 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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